Gratitude Meditation VI

Daily Meditation #215–9/25/2022
Gratitude Meditations — I II III IV V

While you may not have *this* just out your door (I don’t, certainly), you can go on a walk and find dozens of things for which to be grateful.

Gratitude is one of the penultimate perceptual lenses through which we can choose to view and interpret the world around us.

Yet, how frequently do we feel entitled?

Entitlement is an opposite of gratitude.

Entitlement serves as a mental block and raging flame threatening to consume our minds of any fuel of things we ought to feel gratitude for.

It is a delusion to believe you are entitled to anything.

Only one who lives in plenty, greed, and misperception feels entitled to more, more, more.

Be grateful, instead, for that which you already have.
Find contentment.
Strive for more in life, certainly, but be wary of disappointment when you don’t get what you perceive you have earned…

However, overflow with gratitude when you do get it.

You already have so very much.
You are alive.
Hopefully in good health — if not, you could instead be missing a leg, be paralyzed, or suffering even worse pain.
You’re financially well — if you believe not, you have access to electricity, the internet, and are reading this. You’re already so much better off than those burning manure to stay warm, ribs and skeletons showing through flesh.

There is always so much to be grateful for.
Just look around you. Think about your family and friends. You career. Pets. The sounds of the wind licking the leaves in the trees. The way the birds busy themselves.

So, avoid entitlement.
Be glad for what you have.

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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”